Un Solo Sol Kitchen started offering last week a 25 percent discount on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for those who arrive on foot, bike, or public transportation. Photo by Kris Fortin

Un Solo Sol Kitchen, a Boyle Heights restaurant that specializes in Pan-American dishes, but adds an eclectic and healthy twist, is offering a 25 percent discount Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to people that arrive to the restaurant by bike, public transportation, or on foot. Basically, if you want the best deal at Un Solo Sol Kitchen don’t bring a car.

The discount and restaurant’s location gives people an incentive to use a full range of transportation options. The Mariachi Plaza Gold Line Station is across the street, and the green-stripped bicycle lanes pass by the restaurant on 1st Street, said Carlos Ortez, owner of Un Solo Sol Kitchen.

Ortez hopes to get more people from Boyle Heights to explore transportation options to get to the restaurant, he also hopes to increase the links between communities such as Highland Park and Pasadena that are connected by the Gold Line.

Ortez is creative in his attempts to form a sense of community around the restaurant with daily $6 dollar specials, and weekly community dinners aimed at supporting local music. If the equivalent of 50 dinner specials are sold on two consecutive Wednesdays, Ortez hires mariachis to play on the immediate Thursday in front of the restaurant for Un Solo Sol’s Serenata Marichi on 1st Street.

The “anti-car discount,” and community dinners for the Serenata Mariachi on 1st Street are all preambles to Noches de Serenata en la Plaza de Mariachi, or Twilight Serenades in Mariachi Plaza, Ortez’s idea to have a weekly Thursday Mariachi concert. He hopes the Noches de Serenata can be sustained by a local collective of residents and businesses, and help bring more appreciation to Mariachi Plaza as an “icon to the community.”

“I try to focus on the idiosyncrasies of the people in the communities. If you want to help them grow as a community, (you need to) embed yourself into the idiosyncrasy,” said Ortez.